Tuesday, January 03, 2017

Sigh

In a recent homeschooling newsletter, a supposed "expert" on music was arguing that the "back beat" or "offbeat" in music was wrong because of the sound of the heart. Well, let's take a listen.  As someone familiar with the cardiac cycle would infer--the ventricles beat after the smaller, weaker atria--the actual heart beat is, ahem, offbeat.

As Huey Lewis could tell us, of course.




4 comments:

Feather Blade said...

I remember reading an article somewhere else online (I wish I could find it) that mentioned that if you got rid of all the worship music with a syncopated beat, you'd have to drop all of the Jewish tunes from the Psalms, because Hebrew naturally lends itself to syncopation.

And then it contrasted that with the nice, godly, on-beat rhythms of a sex'n'drugs rock and roll band.

Bike Bubba said...

I don't know if I'm your source, but I wrote on exactly that last November. It is true that Hebrew tends to stress the last syllable of each word, which does lend itself to offbeat music. And yes, AC/DC does indeed stress the first beat of each measure in common time.

http://bikebubba.blogspot.com/2015/11/a-linguistic-thought-on-old-testament.html

Bonus: have you ever seen Brian Johnson and Hilliary Clinton together? There might be a reason.

http://bikebubba.blogspot.nl/2007/02/separated-at-birth.html

Thanks for the visit!

Feather Blade said...

XD It was your article!

Thanks! My Google-fu failed me; I could only find the ones you were responding to.

I'll take your word on the second link - Clinton's voice gives me the cringes. ^_^

Bike Bubba said...

But Brian Johnson's doesn't? OK.....

Seriously, the Psalms to Klezmer are a great combination IMO. Almost up there with black gospel IMO. Have a great weekend!